dear alison: enclosed find the complete unexpurgated messages that i sent from europe.
most of them were sent as emails to a collection of people. among my readership was included:
a mother superior of the sisters of saint joseph in hamilton, ontario
an author of several cookbooks, one with an introduction written by calvin trillen
an expresident of the canadian mathematical society
an exstudent of mine who is now an expert in programming little robots
in addition,
let me recommend here julia sweeney’s new cd called “letting go of god.” she is an excatholic who knows where all the bodies are buried.
love,
joe
dear alison:
i learn from the internet that: as of august 22, 2006, the grass is returning to marshlands conservancy. i am glad of it. the picture in the article is a good one, though you do look as if the sun has weathered you a bit. still there is a visionary look in your eyes which reminds me of the character aragorn in the lord of the rings. you may recall that aragon was the ranger who kept guard over middle earth until the time of the ring. in the great conflict with sauron, he was revealed as the true king. so it is on the whole a complimentary comparison. unfortunately i fear that you are still in the guardian phase. much toil and trouble is in that phase.
but, primarily, this is an attempt to give you a summary of my adventures in portugal and the flavor thereof.
first of all: the food!! it is very good and at times challenging.
the pastries with custard and or various combinations of cheese and raisins are not challenging at all.
they are simply wonderful and since portugal has this secret of wonderful coffee, dessert and breakfast time is
a little bit of heaven. it is a wonderful way to start the day. and a wonderful way to continue the day. several times during the day. but limits must be imposed.
but the star is the seafood. so far, i have had a thing for octopus, grilled in various forms and always good.
i have some leftover octopus in my refrigerator right now and i will use it as an appetizer for a light dinner of carrot soup this evening.
i know that cod, in the form of dried salt cod, is the central point of porfuguese cuisine. so far, i have always been distracted by other more
exotic culinary challenges, primarily octopi. they tend to be available in the same places and i have thought that there will always be plenty of
opportunity to have cod. i am learning that there is also plenty of opportunity to have octopus.
one thing disgusts even me and i wish that i could convince one of my hosts, maybe lucia
fernandez who is very nice and helpful,
to get it so that i could safely have a taste without the commitment to a full meal. resistance to this proposal has so far been insurmountable. but lucia has
a friend who she says i will meet and she has tried it. so perhaps she can be convinced to try it again.
my favorite restaurant has it in two incarnations, lampreia a bordalesa and arroz de lampreia. the second form probably requires less courage to eat
since the rice must thin it out a bit. in case you cannot believe it, lampreia does mean lamprey, the vampire of the ocean. it is a primitive snake like fish,
sort of a short hose with a round mouth with circular teeth in front which it uses to attach itself to a larger fish and suck the lifeblood out of it.
in my youth, i remember the horror when these fellows attached themselves to ships coming up the newly opened saint lawrence seaway,
proceeded to infest the great lakes and to devastate the lake trout population.
i must mention my favorite food: acorda, bread pudding with your choice of seafood, it could be mussels, scallops, or yes, yes, yes, fish roe.
it is great and anybody who thinks it is disgusting is just plain wrong and needs a trip to portugal to straighten the ignorant fellow out.
we just returned from the supermercado: lots of wonderful things are found there, including a nice pair of inexpensive light shoes to relieve my feet from the
boots that i brought. but of course the main thing in a supermercado is the food. for example:
varieties of sausage to die for. got a free taste of a lot of them, including the bird sausage that the jews ate instead of pork sausage and that john harper liked so much. excellent, much more delicate than mammal based sausage. would be excellent with a light dijon mustard. this sausage is lighter even than
veal sausage which my ancesters knew something about.
cheeses abound, maybe a little less variety than in france, but good cheeses with character.
piles of dried salt cod. it is not eaten that way. begin preparation with a long soak. but this way you can catch it in northern waters and get it back to
portugal in a still edible form. i think the portuguese prefer it to fresh fish. but they like fresh fish too.
in lisbon, i was focused on the portuguese discovery and exploitation of the world: people like vasco da gama whose tomb i visited (but whose bones may still be on his country estate because the family couldn't bear to part with them and perhaps substituted other bones).
whatever, his tomb is in a beautiful monestery
built by manuel the fortunate who just sat back and watched the money from the spice trade roll in. he is responsible for a style of architecture called manuelito which is a combination of gothic with seafaring themes. think gothic columns with beautiful white stone in the shape of braided ropes.
tomorrow, we go to a small town with a church (called bom jesus) and a great view. i think we walk 9 kilometers but it is flat.
lest i forget, let me mention the town of sintra near lisbon: hilly and mountainous, beloved of byron. you can see why a romantic poet would love the moorish castle and crags. i saw the disneyland castle built by some imported bavarian nobleman and clearly in the spirit of mad king ludwig of bavaria who built the
original model for the disneyland castle. this one is more like an elaborate wedding cake. i did not see the capuchin monastery with the tiny cork padded cells.
but i like what byron said: they prepare for heaven by living in a hell on earth.
i have given only one talk, that in lisbon. that went well.
now i am in braga where i talk on wednesday and friday, not until then. then i talk on wednesday and friday again.
i have this wednesday's talk totally prepared and i am over the hump on this fridays.
so the talks will be ok this week and next week things should be ok since
the wednesday's talk of that week will be similar to the lisbon talk.
that leaves only the last friday and i think i know what to do there.
it is the latin way, relaxed and without pressure. everything gets done
in its time.
yesterday we hiked in a national park on an old roman road. i suppose all roman roads have to be old if they are not in rome. their workmanship was good and has lasted 2000 years. we should do as well. we had coffee and pastry in a posado, which is an ancient structure converted into a fancy inn. very nice.
today it rained and that is a good time to prepare lectures. tomorrow will be the same.
maybe the weather will be bad on wednesday too but that is a lecture day and a fancy dinner day. ok
portugal has a tradition of music called fado, which is their version of the blues, but more light and refined.
in fact, fado in the town of coimbra was brought there by ex-university of lisbon students who were filled with sadness over the trials and
tribulations of life, failed romances and crushed dreams of various kinds, often they contemplate ending it all, but they do not do it.
anyway, here is mariza, portuguese born in mozambique, one of the leading lights of fado:
http://www.mariza.com/index.html
she is my choice for the new queen of fado, the old one being amalia rodrigues, deceased circa 1999 after a long reign.
you know what they say: you cannot know the portuguese heart if you don't know fado.
on thursday, we go to hear cristina branca in person. she is one of the heir apparents to the queen of fado. it should be great. by the way, i hear that there is a new fado song called "21 grams". they were surprised that i knew the theme of the song.
but i do know a lot about any movie that naomi watts has been in. you can tell why it could become a fado song, 21 grams being the weight of a soul. sometimes we americans are ahead of europe in spirituality, although in my case my interest in naomi watts is only tangentially spiritual.
it is on novermber 1 that i start my drive through spain. i have an added bonus. before that (this weekend) i will be given a two day tour of
santiago de compostella in spain by lucia who studied there and who knows it well. you recall that they have the bones of st john the apostle there and you can get dispensation for all sorts of sins, like lusting after naomi watts instead of contemplating 21 grams of soul. i wanted to visit there but now i will have done that this weekend and i can go directly into asturia, the mountainous region of spain where the christians held out until they could begin to expell the moors in the 9th century (or thereabouts). very beautiful, lucia was born there and will advise me on the best sites..
anyway. i get an extra day to fit in the guggenheim museum in bilbao and the beaches in san sebastien.
by the way, since i will be driving and on the move in spain, i am not sure that i will be able to send many travel notes at that time. i will probably have to enter a period of silence. but that is then and this is now.
somehow i still have not gotten my mouth around a cod. it has to happen soon.
in closing, let me relate to you that some kind of initiation is going on at the university here. the upperclassmen/women are clad in black capes with black tricorner hats, very stylish, they look demonic, rather reminiscent of some nightmarish scenes in don giovanni (i can't explain this, you have to see the movie amadeus).
anyway, in these stylish but demonic costumes, they order the first year students to do humiliating things, like doing pushups and standing at attention while they are scolded. there is also some martial singing involved. it is like the army but very stylish and, if you could see some of the upperclass persons (for me the young ladies) who are doing this torturing ,you would realize that it wouldn't be that bad to be with them in abu graib. black capes, black tricorner hats, black stockings, black high heels, stern discipline. it is a real turn on. only the whips are missing!
this all makes me feel that i really need that pilgrimage to santiago de compostella in the near future. maybe i need the full dispensation and should shuffle the last 100 kilometers to it on my knees. it is the traditional way. the most effective way.
ok, on that note, so long for now,
think fado, think cod, think eating kids (i remind all perverts that a kid is a baby goat except possibly when defined by some republicans), think of attractive and stern young ladies in black capes. it is all too much, it is all so portuguese. i can't say anymore. i am overwhelmed.
well, that is all for now.
take care and hope that the US does not declare war on anyone in the near future,
love,
joe
now finally i have had cod in portugal, that which started as a stiff salt dried corpse and was transformed into a totally palatable fish in a cream sauce. it was good but it had a shredded quality to it and i must say that i miss the texture of fresh fish. for example, i found the steamed halibut in the university cafeteria to be a preferable dish. it is genuinely moist and tasty, not overcooked at all, cooked by and for people who genuinely like fish. salt cod must of necessity be overprocessed. it is too much “fooled around with.” that is better than it rotting. and, over the centuries, the portuguese have grown fond of it that way. and it isn’t bad, heavy cream flavored with shredded fish is good. it is just that fresh fish is better. in my opinion.
i gave my first lecture in braga. i admit that i learned something from it, which is a different experience than lecturing to calculus students! i did not make a mistake in the lecture but there was something which i had not completely understood. the intelligent audience questioned the point. and, now from these good promptings from the audience, the thing is crystal clear and on a firm footing. it is satisfying.
i got paid today. now i am walking around with 2750 euros in my pocket. i feel nervous with so much cash. i will keep it on my person at all times. in deep storage in the belt pocket that i carry. and i will stop using my credit card while i am here. only cash from now on. it is difficult to spend so much money here in portugal. food is cheap, the hotel is already paid for, and my hosts don’t let me pay for much. the money just stays. but soon i go to france and i know the french know better how to extract money from you. substantial gallic subtractions will be made.
it is raining again, quite hard. it cuts down on the walking this tourist likes to do. i am confined and at the mercy of lucia who is always ready to drive me somewhere. but i am dependent this way. i can’t even walk from my hotel at the train station to the university. i can’t buy stamps and mail things at the post office. i can’t even visit my favorite pastry shop. what a horror! i have to subsist on the pastries you can get from the little grocery shop nearby. they are not as good as the fresh ones. i am tired of this rain and i want it to go away!
at least lucia has lent me an umbrella.
tonight we heard a live performance of fado by cristina branco, in the big city of porto. cristina bronco may lack a little bit of drama but she has a wonderful voice. she is playful, skipping barefoot on and off stage, a more joyous version of joan baez.
there could be a fado dedicated to rain. fado is suited to misery. it shares that with much other music, opera, country, blues, etc.
lucia shares a characteristic with doris harper. she believes i should eat healthy food. so she influenced me to buy the most tasteless and fat free sausage. it is like shoe leather. well, excuse me! sausage should not be a healthy food! it should be filled with fat and other good tasting things. all civilized cultures know that. all europe knows that. even north americans know that, although this knowledge is fading there. saint julia preserve us! today, i purchased some linguisa, which should cure the problem.
i am going away for the weekend to santiago de compostella, the place where one can get massive dispensations for one's sins.
so i have to go to sleep right now and cannot write much. i will write more when we get back on monday. but let me say right now that of course i have gotten a fado cd, in fact, carla gave me one of mariza, in my opinion the greatest fado singer of them all, at least she is now, since the old queen is dead and mariza seems to get better with each album. let me also say that i have already supplied you with fado, even mariza fado, just click on the following and you will hear;
http://www.mariza.com/index.html
in the news over here: my understanding is that as the movie, marie antoinette, has gotten mixed reviews over here, bad ones in france, only fluff and gowns, but good ones in the rest of europe, much fluff and gowns. as for myself, i have always wanted to see a cheerleader type play marie antoinette, in fact, i think that probably is accurate casting, and i have always had a guilty passion for kirsten dunst, much like the one i had for a young debbie reynolds and for the same reasons. so of course i want to see it when i get back. oops! yet another reason i have to visit santiago de compostella!
love,
joe
best wishes from rainy portugal:
in attempt to cut down on my workload and leave a little time to prepare math lectures, i am sending this as both a combined email to some and also as a letter. i hope you are not insulted. but i am in a little bit of a pickle. i am writing a book and giving 4 lectures in braga. somehow i have contrived to spend 3 of those lectures on one chapter of the
book (localization) and have only one lecture left to summarize all 13 chapters of the book (how to prove all the exponent theorems in one easy lesson). some preparation time is required!
i just visited santiago de compostella, very impressive. you should see them swing that censor (= incense container)! this might seem a trivial thing to mention but i am talking about sending it up to the cathedral ceiling approximately 150 meters off the ground. in the course of a 1000 years, the monks must have killed a few people this way! when i saw it, the words "mein gott!" burst out of my mouth. i was not prepared for the magnitude of the event.
evidently a group of pilgrams from britain paid for this privelege. it is usually done only a few times a year.
the cathedral is a pilgrimage site, you can walk to it on the "camino de santiago" from france, a distance of approximately 800 kilometers. for this feat, you will get a rather complete remission of your sins, your bible stamped, a scallop shell, and a fine free dinner at the fancy hotel next to the cathedral. i hear you have to eat this dinner away from the regular guests. the pilgrims look like they have just come off the appalachian trail and they may stink a little.
the backpacks of the pilgrams lean against the walls of the cathedral, for some reason right next to the confessionals. these are serious backpacks, weighing 30 to 40 pounds.
although i did not walk much of the full distance, i am still hoping for forgiveness for excessive contemplation of naomi watts.
in case you are not familiar with santiago de compostella (saintiago = saint james the apostle = saint jacobi), this place supposedly contains the bones of the apostle saint james who came to spain to convert it and then went back to jerusalem where he was beheaded. two of his disciples returned his bones to spain where the bones were buried until the moors came.
for 200 years during the occupation of spain by the moors, the bones of santiago were kept hidden and either lost or misplaced. they were conveniently found near the beginning of the reconquest and a chapel was built by king alphonso who knew a good thing when he saw it. the legend is that santiago at times led the christian armies against the moors and a stature in the cathedral portrays him trampling moors and swinging his sword. he is sometimes called "the moor killer."
the plaque in the cathedral says "sante jacobi" and my first reaction was to think that this was a lot of veneration for a mathematician. but i was corrected by gustavo.
on the way back, we stopped at some seaside celtic ruins, your standard stone walls and circles by the sea, but very impressive nonetheless.
after some resistance, i have resolved to try one of the local specialities: lamprey. at first i was disgusted that anyone would eat such a fish but now, as i see how prevalent it is, i consider this an opportunity which i should not pass up. lucia says that i should try it only at a restaurant she knows. a cautious girl.
but i explained that eating this would be a major achievement in a long term contest with fred cohen to see who could eat the most disgusting food. chocolate covered garlic is trivial compared to this!
by the way, i think it has rained for a solid week while i have been here.
best wishes,
joe
hello to all: lucia has given me a day off so i resolved to go to the bem-me-quer restaurant and order lampreia a bordelesa.
i walked over with a sense of adventure and the small sense of dread which is a part of all true adventures. would i be able to
enjoy it, would i be able to even finish a large fraction of it? i did not know.
when i entered the restaurant, i informed the waiter that i had come for the lampreia. he sadly replied that it was out of season. only in january do they serve it when the creatures are caught swimming up the rivers. he made it clear that this was crucial to their taste. and he added that, even though he had been trying to like the taste of lamprey since childhood, he had never liked it, in season or out. but i said, i see it on the menu in other restaurants. he said scornfully, they get it frozen from france, from bordeaux to be precise. i guess every country has its culinary pride and, for portugal, lamprey is part of it, even if some waiters do not like to eat them. my waiter made it clear that he could only eat lamprey in season. and that it was a food destined to be either loved or hated.
what to do? the waiter suggested two house specialities, young kid and their version of dried salt cod. he assured me that both were quite good and i chose the kid, promising to come back for the cod at a later date.
the kid wasn't bad. it has a strong but not unpleasant taste. but, with tastebuds formed in america, i prefer the sweeter meats, veal being my favorite. as it is with meats, so it is with fish. the sweeter fish get my vote. but, all in all, it was a wonderful meal, the kid was excellent if you like kids, the potatoes, rice, and kale were
superb, and, last but not least, the salad was a joy, fresh, crisp, and with a perfect vinegar and oil dressing. with a local red wine. give me the simple life. as long as you add to it the dessert of the wonderful creme brulee that they have here. i swear that it is better than the french version. it is even better than the
catalan version.
i am in my home by the train station, relaxing from dinner, and feeling totally content that i have all my lectures prepared. i only have to give them, wednesday and
friday. and i must say that the totality of these lectures makes me feel good since i can see that i have actually made a small difference in mathematics while on this earth. blowing my own horn.
i also feel content that i have searched the internet and firmed up my travel plans. i think i will divert south into
central spain where they have the large castles built during the reconquest.
then i will visit the tomb of el cid. i suppose that charlton heston did a good impersonation and that
sophia loren did an equally fine job impersonating his wife, jimena. anyway, i have always been impressed that,
at his request, she tied his dead body to his horse so that he could lead his army into battle against the moors.
that alone is worth a visit. if jimena's tomb is there, i will visit that too out of respect for sophia.
i knew you could make hotel reservations on the internet but i hesitated for two reasons. i want to check with lucia that the
driving time between successive hotels is doable. my main worry is that it could be hard to find a specific hotel in a
large town. but i have had the revelation that one can book in smaller towns. or at a hotel right on the beach in san sebastien where you can't miss it.
i am less worried now about not finding a place to sleep. and hotel rooms (3 star) seem to cost approximately 70 euros a night, well within my price range.
so things are looking up.
in accordance with my new found taste for castles, motivated i admit by the incessant rain, i think that i will continue the castle experience in france,
emphasizing the last strongholds of the cathars as they were purged in the albigenean crusade. i will also visit the walled town of carcassonne.
it is back to the middle ages for me. with a side trip to some lesser known cave which has primitive cromagnon art said to rival that at lascaux.
then i will land safely in uzes with brayton gray and then in ste-cecile with norman and judy,
in the words of robert mcnammara (which could be repeated by donald rumsfeld), i see the light at the end of the tunnel.
best wishes,
joe n
dear norman: i have no memory of the brazillion joke from you. that proves nothing since i do have officially certified brain damage
as a result of my now far past ordeal of the aortic dissection.
but i do remember very well that you sent me the wonderful berlitz ad with the german coastguard
"what are you sinking about?"
as for the wonderful itinerary suggestions that you made, i hate to say that some of them are fatally flawed.
number 1, the altamira caves have a 3 year waiting list to get to see them. it is true that, like lascaux, they have built a very successful replica
and i may have a chance to see that. but maybe not.
it turns out that i only have 3 days in spain and some of that time has to be spent covering ground.
i intend to see the castle of penafiel which is on my route. because of their long history of battling the moors, the spanish have built many, many
castles. in fact, the land of castilla means in spanish "land of castles." it seems that centuries of moving the frontier with the moors to the south
required new castles to be built very often.
then, also on my direct route to the spanish-french border, i go to the town of burgos, where one of the
3 greatest gothic cathedrals in spain holds the tomb of el cid. el cid was played by charlton heston in the movie and, despite this fact, martin scorcese
calls it the greatest historical epic ever made. as you recall, el cid wins his last battle postumously, his dead body tied to his horse by his wife (sophia loren)
and leading his soldiers to victory against the moors. i can't resist saying that a young sophia loren could tie my body to a horse any time she wanted to.
then i go in the direction of santander where altamira lies and, if i have time
i will see the replica.
and, i will drive through the city of bilbao, probably have time to stop the car, get out my camera, and take a picture of
the guggenheim museum. only to see the outside, going in would take too much time. i have to get to san sebastian and get rid of the
car, find out how to get over to bayonne, france and get another one. there is no time. yikes, i feel like the white rabbit in alice in
wonderland.
when i get the new car in france, i have to hightail it over to foix, the last center of resistance of the albigencians (=cathars).
then i get my butt up to carcassonne, and maybe have time to drive over that bridge in millau. the town of albi and the bridge really should
wait until i return in the spring. especially since brayton gray has seduced me into spending one night in uzes before i get to
ste cecile (= as you may know, the name of the cathedral in albi, which does look very striking). actually, brayton said something like he would not forgive me if
i didn't at least stop by.
time is my enemy, but i console myself with the thought that, as arnold swarzeneggar said in the terminator movie,
i'll be back. probably in may. i realized immediately that 8 days for all of spain and france is not enough time, epecially when you
have to cover hundreds and hundreds of kilometers and also to switch cars midway.
it ain't easy. what one should do is, see one thing in spain and see it well, see one thing in france and see it well. but i can't get out of the fact that
i have to drive hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. if those roads are winding and twisting, that could take a long time.
but, anyway, i am pleased to say that my lectures in portugal are over and have been a mild success. people seemed to appreciate that
i made an effort to do the basic things about localization (including the jazzy "neisendorfer localization") and to explain them well. i even
put Hopf's nontriviality of the 3rd homotopy group of the 3 sphere into a broader context localized around serre's result concerning the
infinity of homotopy groups of a simply connected finite complex. and i proved everything in a way my audience could understand.
i did a good job.
by the way, i have already seen the swinging incense in spain's pilgramage church of santiago de compostella and i am pleased to have discovered that
the century old incense tradition is a result of the fact that these pilgrams actually stink and always have.
fortunately i have not yet left portugal without discovering that this is a land of great soups! the big meals can go to hell, it is soup for me as often as i can get it.
best wishes,
see you soon,
but i will try to observe the velocity laws in spain and france,
joe n
before i leave braga i should mention the large numbers of roosters who live here and
crow lustily early in the morning. remember that i live in the city next to the train station so that this is particularly impressive. i have never seen a rooster here but i have heard them crow right outside my window and i have heard the answers. since roosters must represent a larger number of hens, and since they must be kept for a purpose, i can only assume that braga, urban though it may be, is a major center of egg production. in fact i now remember that lucia made a delicious omelette like thing with roasted red peppers and that she said that she had made them with especially good eggs which were given to her by a friend. so perhaps the omnipresent roosters are the indirect source of these eggs.
lucia and all the people here in mathematics have been wonderful to me. with all the rain i needed many rides and they were always willing to give one even though it meant driving all the way across town and back. for this reason, not to mention the many trips she has made to vigo, beyond, and back, i call lucia the harmonic oscillator.
my only complaint is that we eat too much here and that it is the custom to eat dinner at 8, a rather late start for me. it is usually 10 pm before i get home. i know that the locals don’t do this all the time. but for guests, they feel the need to do it.
today lucia drove me to the train station in vigo to pick up my car. afterwards she kindly drove slowly and led me through the awful traffic in vigo until i was safely on my road to spain. i must say that the vigo traffic was tense for me. i needed to learn how to handle this particular car, especially when stopped on a steep uphill with a car right behind me. i was relieved once i was on the highway and pointed toward my hotel in penafiel, approximately 400 kilometers away. i am now in the hotel from which i have i fine view of the major castle up on the hill. that is what i came for and tomorrow i will go up to see it close up.
my adventures getting dinner deserve mention. i speak little spanish and therefore have to rely on the kindness of strangers, in other words, on the abilities of the locals to comprehend ignorant foreigners like me. last night i tried to get dinner at the hotel. the lady at the reception spoke a little english and informed me that i should eat in the bar. the girl in the bar informed me that i would have to eat in the restaurant. the lady in the restaurant informed me that i would have to eat in the bar. i felt like a ping pong ball and still do not understand these conflicting interpretations of the regulations. but in the end i had a wonderful dinner in the restaurant, sort of a ris de veau with artichoke hearts. it was a new and interesting way to do the dish, worth all the effort, and it convinced me that, in spite of the language difficulties, all would be wonderful in the end. only patience and calmness were required.
in the morning i went up to the castle. it was enormous, a real statement of medieval christian power in the 15th century. since it wouldn’t o pen until 11 am, i confined myself to gawking at it from outside its walls. very impressive.these days the inside is used as a museum of the history of local wine production and i didn’t mind at all missing that. though i would have liked to have looked down from the battlements, just to see the height. the view of surrounding countryside was spectacular and moorish army was in sight. all being safe, it was more important to get on the road to burgos, the cathedral, and the tomb of el cid.
so i headed north. i must say that i have never seen so much fog as i have seen in porfugal and spain. in portugal it could be explained by the proximity to the sea but in spain i was driving across a high inland plateau and its presence remains a mystery. it was not bad to drive through. i think one needs merely 200 meters of visibility on a major highway to be safe and i always had at least that.
so i arrived in burgos, saw signs for the cathedral which my hotel, the meson el cid, is adjacent to, and headed right there without any trouble. but when i got there i discovered that the major street leading to the cathedral was closed for repairs and, furthermore, once you got to the cathedral, it was necessary to drive the car up a steep set of stone stairs to get to the hotel. needless to say, i retreated to the outlying suburbs to try another tactic. the gods must have been with me since i wound up driving the wrong way through the old city on an unknown to me one way medieval street filled with pedestrians and, voila, arrived to my surprise in front of my hotel. i turned the car around and parked as quickly as i could.
having reached here, i must say that this is the perfect hotel. the cathedral is directly out my window and the view of the stonework is terrific. of course, by the time i reached the hotel, the cathedral was closed to tourists until 4 pm. i can’t complain. it has to be dedicated to religious purposes sometime during the day and i like the fact that they keep us camera toting tourists at bay for a few hours during the day. keeps the place wholesome.
besides, it gave me time to walk along the river to see the statute of el cid and his horse defending spain in the main square. very impressive and fierce stature. and the river walk is wonderful. on the way back, i had the tapas special in a small bar. tapas is heaven for gnoshers like me. i recommend the little anchovy and hard boiled egg on toast.
i am using this opportunity to have have tea at the hotel. i seem to have a slight case of the sniffles and the tea has helped that. but i should go to get some anti cold medicine just to be on the safe side. fortunately there is a pharmacy in the square in front of the cathedral and i need to go there to see it and the tombs of el cid and jimena.
ok, i am back. the cathedral is beautiful, inside and out. very gothic, lots of soaring ceilings and colorful stained glass windows. el cid and jimena have the place of honor in the cross of the transcepts. can’t complain about that. the tomb is a simple flat marble marker on the floor with writing on it. and it is directly beneath the high dome of the tower. definitely the place of honor. still there is no embellishment and some recumbant statues would have been nice. every minor figure connected with the history of the cathedral seems to get a tomb like this, high constables, their wives, and archbishops are seem to merit some kind of image. so why not the cid and jimena? still the cross of the transcepts is the most honored place.
i decided that i need a hat. after all, it is november. but the shops here all have names like ralph lauren and the cheapest hat i could find cost 88 euros. no way i will spiring for that. i will soon be in basque country and will acquire a basque cap.
hi folks:
in portugal and spain, i have been struck by the high level of intelligence exhibited in the labeling of floors in buildings. the ground floor is labeled 0 so that there is no waste of this useful number. more important, the floors below the ground floor are labeling using negative numbers, -1,-2,-3, etc. while this may seem a trivial thing, i recall a college class for future math teachers taught by fred cohen at the university of kentucky. a student there explained her inability to comprehend the solution of a math problem with the statement: "that problem involves negative numbers. i just freeze whenever i see a negative number."
if i remember correctly such things were one of the reasons fred did not want his daughters to grow up in kentucky.
before i forget, let me mention some things which occurred to me when viewing the museum of religious art in the burgos cathedral. there were representations of the torture of christ. but at least the romans were honest about it. they did not deny that they did it. they felt that there was a legitimate reason for torture, namely, to set an example to anyone who would cross them. this is at least based on facts about human behavior. they did not do it solely to obtain probably unreliable information. they would have no objection to doing that but their overwhelming purpose was intimidation. one wonders if the current torturers of the world might also have this motivation. they deny that they torture but, since nobody believes them, perhaps they also hope to intimidate.
driving from burgos to san sebastian involved passing through some ferocious fog. is the iberian peninsula never to be free of this fog at this time of year? it was dense enough to make me drive very cautiously through the mountains i was surprised to see. i thought that they were all to the west of me in austurias. perhaps these were prepyrennies. they reminded me of the appalachians or of the swartzwald.
anyway, i can understand how the christian communities could hide out in these mountains while the whole iberian peninsula was crawling with muslims. a place like this was the center from which the reconquest spread. those christians were really backed into a corner and it is amazing that they were able to get all of spain back. perhaps what lucia said is true: spain was very thinly populated at the time and the reconquest involved expelling rather few people.
today i arrived in san sebastian, called donastia by the basques. i found the hotel with little trouble at the plaza pio XII. the traffic was fierce, but i am beginning to handle this with more confidence. however, i will be glad that in france i do not need to drive into any more cities. i am going to stop at hotels on the outskirts. with no advance reservations. all my semi french friends tell me that reservations are not necessary at this time of year. and, although my french is bad, it is better than my spanish.
in san sebastian, i walked along the lovely river walk and reached the famous beach. a very heavily developed place but it retains an old world charm. i saw 3 people swimming in the atlantic. remember that this is november! but it didn't seem so cold. still i was happy to buy a hat, not the traditional basque one but a soft red version of it that seemed more practical and only cost 10 euros. a happy purchase!
in san sebastian the hills come right into the town and then down to the atlantic coast. sort of an appalachia by the sea. the story of "suddenly last summer" by tennessee williams came to mind. in this town, missus venable's (katherine hepburn's) son sebastian is chased up the hills from the beach and eaten by the young boys he was fond of. elizabeth taylor's character supposedly goes mad upon witnessing this. the place does have a feeling of degenerate sexuality about it. i can hear some evidence in the room adjacent to mine in what is certainly an upscale hotel. but it is decidedly heterosexual and indicates that someone is having a great time. in my previous hotels, in steamy portugal, land of fado, and in central spain, land of religious fervor, either the walls were thicker or the couples more sedate. oh well, no matter, i wish them well, not that they need it. they seem quite competent.
by the way, the inbox of my email is getting crushed by the evermore elusive spammers. the only thing that there is a shortage of is replies from friends. hint.
to those few who have responded, thanks from europa.
best wishes,
joe n
hello to all:
my hotel in san sebastian had the fanciest breakfast buffet i have ever encountered. the standard things were all there, excellent coffee, an extremely fresh selection of juices, yogurts, cereals, croisants, etc. but also there were two kinds of gravlax, salmon and something else which was a white fish flesh and very good. in addition, there were two kinds of cream pastries, a whipped cream puff and a custard thing. for me, such pastries were a new thing at a breakfast. truly, this was an upscale hotel.
after breakfast, i paid the bill, a bargain at 80 euros, and headed for the car return at the airport. i returned the car and took a cab across the spanish-french frontier (15 euros) to the hendaye train station. once at the station, i discovered that there was some kind of problem up the train line which required the use of fire trucks. no further coherent explanation was forthcoming. but for this reason no trains were running. there was no way to get to my hotel in bayonne by train, at least not in the predictable future. bayonne was 30 kilometers away, not too far, but too far to walk. so i took a cab, a bargain at 60 euros. it took me right to my hotel. i felt competant, i had succeeded in all my assigned tasks for the day.
after checking in to the hotel, i headed for the nearby bayonne cathedral. it was a nice enough gothic cathedral but not a match for the one in burgos wherein lies the tomb of el cid and his lady. but it was nostalgic for me to see someone sweeping and tidying the place up. many years ago, approximately 30 years ago, i had noticed an old lady tidying up the pews in chartres cathedral and, when she saw me looking at her, she shyly brushed her hair out of her face. i took it to be a bit of pride in her appearance, i was quite touched, and i have never forgotten it. after all these years, she still reminds me of my mother.
i kept wandering around the town of bayonne, a place of narrow streets and smart shops. eventually, i encounted a nice bistro-bar specializing in paella. since i had missed out on this speciality in spain, i decided to have it here. it was the most enormous plate of rice with calamari, shrimp, clams, mussels, and little pieces of sausage. i had a beer with it. the food was excellent but i wound up taking most of it back to my hotel for a late evening snack.
by the way, i have no complaints about the sausage in the paella but the american version which substitutes polish sausage is an improvement in that one item. those poles do understand sausage. this from a person of german heritage counts a lot.
after i left the bistro, i saw a stand selling fresh oysters in the market. very tempting but, on the whole, i prefer the paella, if
only because i hadn't had it. i encountered once again the limits of the size of the human stomach. fresh raw oysters are a perennial favorite of mine. it was hard to pass them by. ordinarily, nothing beats them in my book and these looked very good.
but what the hell, man does not live on raw oysters alone, although i suspect the couple in the room next to mine in san sebastian had had a full dose. have you ever noticed that pigeons outside a hotel room sound a lot like a couple having sex? without the climax, of course. pigeons are never satisfied.
jacques may find this next statement of mine unbelievable, but: "i find it much more relaxing to be in a french speaking country. compared to portugal and spain, my competence goes way up."
in french, speaking with much hesitation, i have a nontrivial chance of making myself understood. i can even converse with the cab drivers, admitedly only about trivial things such as: le pays de basques, c'est beau, ne pas?
but it is better than nothing. things are looking up. and i have no more need to drive into traffic crazed cities. in france, i will stay in hotels on the outskirts. and there are only two more nights of hotels until a safe haven. i called uzes and talked to sophie on skype, a wonderful piece of software. she told me that brayton and she are quite content to let me arrive late one night and then stay two. this saves me the aggravation of getting a hotel. of course, they do happen to live in the heart of the town of uzes, a place jacques described by the phrase "it has fierce traffic." and sophie says "there are pedestrians and bicyclists in the streets. if you happen to hit one of them with your car, you go to prison." this would be a fitting end to my driving adventures.
best wishes from la belle france,
joe n
p.s. on the last night in san sebastian i noticed that there were a large number of attended and unattended young children out on the streets. the following come to mind; 10 year boys playing football near the cathedral and a young girl walking home alone along the river.
this in addition to all the younger ones playing a short distance from not very attentive parents. clearly a society that works. and the same is happenning here in bayonne, france.
i also recall tarahumara indian children in mexico walking miles from their homes, little groups of 2 or 3 tiny children holding hands far out alone in the country, knowing exactly where they were going. so here we have two societies, one advanced and the other socalled primitive, and they both succeed in creating a secure environment for children. compared to these, i reflect on the fact that my grandniece, who is 15, is not allowed to walk the streets at night in phoenix. and with good reason. so what is it about the united states that makes us fail to provide a safe environment for children? could it be the overly competitive economic system with its extreme divisions of wealth?
hello again,
in bayonne, i detected a definite sign of being in france. a very fancy department store near my hotel has a lingerie display in one of its windows which is worthy of a fine bordello. i suspect that they could get a good rate if they decided to rent out those mannikins by the hour. the french certainly know what the purpose of fine lingerie actually is.
i must be getting old since i actually took a taxi to get my rental car. in the old days i would have carried my luggage for the mile or so that was necessary. not any more! after all, what is 10 euros more or less? with all the euros lucia gave me i can afford to be a big spender. and i must not forget that i am in the post aortic dissection part of my life.
i can see the pyrennies in the distance from the highway. wow! i had no idea that they were so big and jagged. i think some of them are about 10,000 feet high and they rise from near sea level. this is worthy stuff. i would like to visit them someday when it isn’t november. but down at near sea level, the sun is shining and it is quite warm. life is good.
iit is warm and beautiful. i have a chance to reflect on how happy i am to be retired and to be not teaching calculus. the teaching of calculus has really degenerated into a ‘’no child left behind’ philosophy. at least, there is a strong tendency that way. woe to the old fashioned teacher who actually expects students to study until they finally get it. these students will never cross that rubicon since they don’t have to. i had the old fashioned idea that all you owed to a student was a sincere attempt to explain your subject clearly. out of date!
i am particulary happy to be done with a university administration which chose to deemphasize mathematical excellence in the teaching of science. even physicists, at least those of national reputation and independent of local influence, were appalled. the president of the american physical society stated that, with this one action, our president had succeeded in reducing us to a second rate university. and, although we drove back the barbarians, it is like world war 2 and the graduate program is a bombed out city.
now we have a new university president and he seems much better that the old one. he is no fool, a politically astute character with a past history of taking some principled positions. but i note that it is still politically necessary for him to honor the old president, obvious failure though the latter may be. this person of limited talent will be honored by the holding of a fancy investiture ceremony as he assumes a new professorship created for him. since he cannot find another job, a suitable position was created. as far as i can see, his only field of expertise is bankruptcy law. he cetainly has done a lot to keep the university on that path.
i note that the university has named a street after the old president. you may know that kimmie meissner has a street in her hometown named after her. but she had to win a world championship in figure skating. her hometown officials had no influence over the judging of that event. so it is perfectly acceptable for the hometown to name a street after her. in the case of our president, no one outside this university has seen fit to propose him for a single honor and the naming of a street is an act of pure incest. enough of him!
i should add that i am fully aware that i owe my life to the university hospital and that the aforementioned administrators did encourage the doctors to save me in my hour of need. that does count for something. they certainly fail to qualify as pure evil.
i saw a sign for lourdes and was tempted to turn off and to find out how well they do on the cure of aortic dissections. or of sick universities. but i did not want to dilute my faith in santiago de compostella. any pilgrimage site which welcomes smelly hikers and still recognizes the need to fumigate the place has my undying affection. besides, i think it takes an apostle who has seen the world to handle material like i have to bring.
i arrived in the small town of saint bertrand de comminges which has a spectacular cathedral up on a hill. it is really huge and dominates the town. it is amazing that it is located there. as near as i can figure, a bunch of renegade cistericians called olivettis came there from italy and founded the place. where they got the money, i have not learned. anyway, i learned that it now has no clergy to tend it and that the guide service was not functioning in november. hence, the cathedral is closed to visitors. but it really is a spectacular cathedral from the outside. i did not regret seeing it even though it looked harsh and bare of ornament. that is its charm. it did not look like it ever had the permanent base of wealth to create lavish interior riches, such as lots of gold leaf, and paintings and sculpture by great artists that you have to pay to come to an out of the way place. on second thought, i bet the interior is equally impressive in the same way. now i regret missing the inside.
unfortunately, it being november, every hotel in this attractive little town is closed for the season. all two of them. i headed west hoping to find an open hotel. at first i had no luck or i was just too choosey.
at last, i found a hotel in the ariege valley of the pyrennie foothills. the room was modern, clean, and even stylish with featherbeds. the room even had a balconey. except for a bit of road noise, it was a very fine hotel. i was happy.
since it was only 3 pm and since dinner would not be served until 7 pm, i went to a supermarket i had passed looking for cheese or some other sustenance. but it was sunday, the supermarket was closed. i began to regret ignoring all those shops in the rest areas on the french version of the autobahn.
there was a macdonalds adjacent to the supermarket and i thought, what the hell, i have never tried a foreign macdonalds. and this is france where they invented french fries and where they really know how to do them well. i thought: the advantage of macdonalds is that it is always open! i went in and i stood in a line which did not move for 10 minutes. it started with only 5 people ahead of me and it ended with that many. hope died slowly. but i left without food and concluded that macdonalds had succeeded in making the french accept the concept of “le slow food.” eventually, i found a snack bar where a lady made me a cheese sandwich. the bread was wonderful!
the lady of the hotel, a thoroughly charming hostess, tells me two good things. one, the road noise will dissipate and go away completely from midnight to morning. in fact, it has lessened already. also, she tells me that the route to the last cathar stronhold of montsequr is well marked and easy to follow. in france the cathars, aka the albigensians, are my main focus. in the 12th century, those poor folks got pounded in the name of france and the church. in this case, pounded means burnt at the stake. and all your castles and wealth looted. simon de monfort was sort of the dick cheney of his time, probably even worse. and, unfortunately, simon seems to have been quite competant at persecuting heretics. it all goes to show that, then as now, leading a moral life is irrelevant, all that counts are that your professed beliefs further the powerful.
in the hotel, i had the classic french meal of steak and frites. with bearnaise sauce and a carafe of red wine. john moore would have enjoyed this. but i must say that my mother’s fries were better than this version, they were crisp brown on the outside and tender on the inside, just as they should be. the french are not always perfect. but i have had superb fries from a stand on the highway on france.
every once in while on my travels i think about mathematics. i do not think it is extremely productive. driving and abstract thinking were not made to go together. and my powers of concentration are not what they were. but i do believe that, despite or even because of the disadvantages of this type of thinking, nontrivial progress is made which could not be made in any other way. one is forced to get a change of perspective, less focused on detail and more focused on global orgainization. in line with my, i think, 4 successful lectures in braga on localization, i find it attractive to pick a short subject matter and to create a short series of lectures on that. right now, my focus is on homological aspects of loop multiplication. only a true professional could love this stuff.
ok, i just finished a productive day. i started with a visit to the chateau foix. it was closed but i am used to that and have mastered the skill of looking at castles from below and outside. sort of a beseigers point of view. so, a success.
i went on my way to the chateau de montsequr, the last refuge of the cathars. there it was on the top of its mountain. if you walked up the long steep path, it think it was open and that there would be noone there to collect the 4 euro fee. such an opportunity! but, i decided that i had so mastered the art of seeing castles from an outside perspective that i would skip the climb up the mountain to see it close up.
from a beseigers perspective, it was a very impressive place which it could only be captured by the major son of a bitch of his time, simon de monfort, the guy who makes even dick cheney look good. almost. so far. really, the concentrated hatred it shows that even such an out of the way place would be beseiged is truly impressive.
on i went through the cathar countryside in the foothills of the pyrennies. i was very impressed by the beauty of the place. it is sort of like switzerland with a french twist. wait a second! large parts of switzerland already have a french twist! what i mean is that this is more french, being actually french, and that the petite roblochon cheese is just heavenly with a little apple juice. by the way, i have decided that apple juice is often a superior subsitute for wine.
i am glad that i got to see this french version of the pyrennies and i wonder why it is not more celebrated in the rest of the world. the provencal publicity department seems to have the whole world sewed up, not that they don’t have a wonderful product.
by the way, the french all drive like assholes. they seem to love to tailgate and then, when they finally pass you, they swerve back in front of you with almost no clearance. ok, only the exceptional assholes do the second.
i arrived in carcassonne at 2 pm and almost immediately found a cheap and clean hotel near the walls of the old city. no internet, but otherwise perfect. only 40 euros.
i headed the short distance into the old city. those walls are impressive, 3 kilometers of them in all. because of treason, the son of a bitch monfort was able to capture the city and, of course, it became his private property. only an incompetant son eventually lost it for the monfort family.
what is amazing about carcassonne is exactly what they say about it. in large part an entire medieval city has been preserved, walls, castle, cathedral, narrow streets, and all. except for the fact that all the houses have been converted into shops, restaurants, or hotels, you would never know that you were in the twenty-first century. i believe the sanitation is better now too.
in order to be allowed to see most of the place i had to join a french speaking tour. the french was rapid and relentless. i understood nothing except once in a while i could make out the time period the guide was talking about. this made me focus more on what i was looking at and i count this as a postive experience.
now i am in my hotel trying to figure out what to do with my last day which ends at brayton’s.
i have sadly rejected norman’s suggestions. he is ignoring basic facts about distances. so albi, an important and beautiful place for the cathats = albigensians, will have to wait. as will the wonderful new bridge at millau. i cannot understand how judy ever managed to route herself near that place.
instead, i have proposed to myself two places right on my route. first, there is beziers, burned by the ubiquitous simon de monfort but still with an impressive cathedral. and, second, as a change of pace, there is the sea side town of sept, known for its seafood.
i may make up for passing up the oysters in bayonne!
once more from la belle france:
i headed out on my last day with high hopes for a successful day. my first stop was to be in beziers, where they have an enormous fortress cathedral. i headed for the center of the town and i could see in the distance high on a hill the cathedral. but i would up driving through a warren of streets in a relatively large city with no clear way to go towards the cathedral. i decided that this part of the day was a mistake and that i should head for my second planned stop, the seaside town of sete.
i discovered that a mediterranean beach resort was sensibly closed down for the winter and that i could detect no open restaurants which would serve wonderful seafood. what to do?
the day was still young. then i recalled the suggestion from norman, the bridge at millau. it is true that it was way out of the way. but i could combine that with a drive through the canyon of tarn river, which was highly recommended by my trusty national geographic guide to france. i decided to do it.
all i can say is: norman, forgive me for ever doubting your impeccable taste. that is one hell of a bridge! a real cathedral of transportation! over 2 and a half kilometers long, it is an elegant span of a deep gorge cut by the tarn river. i was very impressed and felt that i had just made the whole day into a success.
i next headed into the canyon of the tarn = gorges de tarn. wow! that is quite a canyon, more impressive because this narrow and deep canyon has been inhabited since time immemorial. clinging to the sides of the canyon are the road and a few towns and castles. most impressive are the isolated farms on the other side of the river. some of them are only reachable by hand operated cable cars. still functioning as a way of life. i felt that this was still primitive nature but it was clear that over the centuries a lot of stonework had been done to make it more livable. lest i forget, it seemed that in season it was a center for canoeing and kayaking. once more, i felt that i had been successful as a tourist and the only thing remaining was to drive successfully to brayton and sophie’s place in uzes.
that is when it started to get dark. i still had kilometers and kilometers of winding, twisting road to cover. whenever an oncoming vehicle passed me, i had to squint my eyes from the glare of the headlights and be very careful that, one, we missed each other, and, two, i stayed on the road. it was nerve wracking. the cars which came up behind me were a little better. all i had to worry about from them was the blinding glare of their headlights in my rearview mirror. but it seemed to me that i was being persecuted by an overwhelming number of french drivers heading home from work in the opposite direction from me.
when i finally reached the town of ales i got a little relief since the highway stopped twisting and turning, got wider, and well marked. i thought: it is all downhill from here! well, not quite true. the final approach to uzes was on narrow and straight roads, dark and still with cars coming my way to watch out for. but i made it to uzes. i stopped and uses my minimal french to ask directions. i got excellent directions and was soon in the immediate vicinity of my goal. at the end, i tried to turn around on the boulevard and was urgently advised against it by an aggravated frenchman who was walking his dog and knew that the boulevard was oneway. after i found a temporary parking place, the kind gentleman took pity on me and led me to the house of brayton and sophie. since i had neglected to buy a phone card actually finding the house was the only way to get there. i rang the bell, brayton answered and i was safe.
so i took brayton to where my car was badly parked, handed my keys to him, and asked him to take me and it to park it in a secure location. we got in the car, circled around a portion of the city, and came back on one way streets to the location of his garage. brayton said: this place is usually empty and there will be no trouble if the car is parked next to mine.
so we left it there and headed back to his wonderful apartment with the 3 story winding stone staircase.
hauling the luggage up a narrow winding staircase bulit in the medieval style was a real chore. but the bedroom was marvelous with a beautiful view of the cathedral and its illuminated tower.
the next morning we woke up to the return of an aggravated sophie. she had just encountered an angry french lady demanding that this strange car vacate her authorized parking space immediately. brayton moved my car to someplace that was free on the street. sophie headed out to buy some flowers to appease the angry lady. the lady disappeared, still consumed with legitimate french outrage over the impertinence of americans who appropriate parking places. sophie had to be content to use the flowers to decorate my bedroom.
we took a nice walk. we saw the source of the water that the romans conveyed to the city of nimes via the most wonderful aqueduct. this aqueduct is a wonder of roman engineering and goes 50 kilometers and over the wondrous pont du gard. i had already seen the pont du gard,which is an enormous bridge and aqueduct, an amazing construction, 2000 yearrs old and still stainding. but the really amazing thing is that the romans where able to construct a 50 kilometer long gravity fed aqueduct with a total drop of only 12 meters. astounding!
one wonders where they got these engineers. was there a roman mit = milan institute of technology which churned them out?
the highlight of my visit to uzes was the lunch of foie gras in a little cafe in the town square . i discovered that i had gone through life thinking that fois gras was some sort of chopped liver. not so! instead it is a divine white creation which totally justifies encouraging geese to overeat (= force feeding) and to add fat to their livers. i cannot believe that animal activists have convinced my home town of chicago to ban it as cruelty to animals. was this a problem which had to be dealt with? and i ask this as someone who no longer eats any eggs which are not cage free. i am not anti-poultry!
in the morning i headed my car on its final journey to the avignon tgv train station. this was to be my one final encounter with french drivers. somehow i missed the sign for the tgv. i asked for directions from someone who had no idea where it was. after circling the town once, i finally saw the sign gare tjv and i followed it to this enormous train station where it was not at all clear where the rental car return was. so i circled the train station several times, each time getting conflicting directions to the place of rental car return. eventually i saw a sign for rental cars and, as i was pulling up to the gate for the car return, there was my savior judy stein. i had made it and i would drive no more in france. at least no more on this trip.
judy had come to avignon to pick me up and also to do some shopping. she took me to a marvelous market filled with shops selling all sorts of glorious french foods, interesting mediterranean fish, tasty sausage and cheese, nice fruits and vegetables, and beautiful meat. i was pleased to see that the french had a high respect for liver, beef and veal. in america, liver is found frozen in thin strips but, in france, it lies fresh and chilled, still intact, ready to be prepared, enjoyed, and savoured.
a quick trip to the house of stein in saint cecile and i was pleased to see my old friend norman sitting in the sun on his patio.
it was warm, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, it was provence.
later we were to have brandade, a marvelous concoction of a roasted red pepper, olive oil, and dried salt cod. i must add that this is the first thing made from dried salt cod that i have really liked. portugal, please forgive me.
today judy helped me to make reservations at the hotel at the paris airport. later we will get the ticket on the marvelous tgv. the end is near. well, not so near. i don’t take the train until the 13th, 4 days from now.
but this is probably the last email message i will send before going home. since entering france, i have been sabotaged by the email. i cannot send out. if i were connected, i could receive. this last message will be sent courtesy of the steins. if you have read this far, you know that this is a vast collection of unsent emails and you now know the reason why.
goodbye from france, in the words of mark twain,
“rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
joe n
i write this from my seat on a plane which is taking me across the atlantic. i have left france and have even eaten an airline mcmeal, chicken mcnuggets with potatoes and a very good imitation of spinach. not bad actually. with a fine glass of seagram’s ginger ale to wash it down. i was tempted to ask the stewardness whether it was legal to serve this stuff before clearing french airspace.
i have left the steins in their cozy abode in sainte cecile. it was a wonderful, relaxing, and productive visit. first of all, their setting is very comfortable and we ate well. it started with the nice brandade i have already mentioned. it continued with a dinner out which included a wonderful appetizer of fois gras with lentils. this appetizer justified an otherwise excellent but disappointing meal. the main course was fish. it was of exellent quality but they had not done much with it. oh yes, norman picked a superb wine for that meal.
then there was a bean casserole made by norman lots of good thing and a blood sausage. to paraphrase w.c. fields, “it was a tasty melange” and the wine brought by the guests, wayne and lydie marshall, was even better than what we had had before. i cannot resist adding that lydie marshall writes cookbooks and that he one on soup has an introduction by calvin trillen. the steins travel in some high culinary circles. but they are rather good cooks themselves.
by the way, i had purchased an interesting sausage which included figs mixed with the meat. we returned from our restaurant meal to discover that the cat had eaten about a quarter of it. no matter. we ate the rest and it was excellent. because of this event i was motivated to return to the little grocery store and stock up on pates and fois gras safely protected in cans. i am taking those home with me.
the productive part of this visit is that i seem to have found a totally acceptable gite to rent when i return to france this coming may. it is owned by a friend of the steins and it even has a pool.
the rest of the visit consisted of norman and i telling stories of amusing mathematics incidents. believe it or not, there are many such stories. here is one with me as a bit player.
many years ago, i ran the topology seminar at the institute for advanced study. there were at the time three groups of mathematicians working on the same problem. we shall refer to them as groups x, y, and z. i invited a member of group x who resided in new york, in fact, he was one of the two coleaders of that group, to give a lecture at the institute and, being proud of my success, i informed a member of group y, in fact the leader of that group, that i had so done and that i hoped that he would be pleased that i had closely accommodated his interests.
but the group y leader said: “you do bad thing. you should not invite him.” i said that i had done so and that i was not going to uninvite him. the lecture was going to happen.
in approximately two weeks, the day of the lecture came and the group x person, aka the speaker, began by acknowledging the work of the group y team in the traditional way of writing their names on the blackboard near the upper left hand corner. the lecture continued on and the speaker reached the right hand side of the platform, some considerable distance from where he had begun. it was now appropriate to acknowledge the work of team z and to write their names on the blackboard. as the speaker began to do so, the leader of group y spoke up and said: “you should not write their names on board. that work not published yet. who knows whether it right or wrong?” the speaker paused and said: “oh, are those the rules?” and he slowly walked the long distance across the raised platform and then erased the names of the group y team.
as we mathematicians say, it is an exercise to fill in the values of x, y, and z. i will give the following hint: the leader of the y team is the central figure in a large number of amusing incidents that i have witnessed.
the time came for norman and judy to deliver me to the tgv station in avignon. the tgv is a marvelous train which quietly, smoothly, and swiftly wisks you from the south of france directly to the paris airport in approximately 3 hours. as i sped through the french countryside, i was much impressed by the fertility and beauty of it. i saw lots of cows. it was clear where all that good cheese came from.
i arrived in at the paris airport and began the process of trying to find the ibis hotel at which i had a reservation. it was right at the airport and required only a shuttle bus to get there. there was absolutely no clue as to how to do this.
but i was very, very lucky. a very nice french lady saw my confusion and said in perfect english: “are you lost? can i assist you?” well, it turned out she was going to the same hotel and she led me there. it should have been the beginning of a romance. she looked a little like celine dion. it was not to be. she was going to san diego the next morning. and it seemed that her interest in me began and ended with seeing me safely to my hotel. nonetheless, i shall remember her with great fondness. i wonder if she can sing.
at the hotel i was to endure one more disappointment. i had hoped that a paris hotel would provide free or at least reasonably priced internet access. it was not to be. the price was 10 euros for 45 minutes. since the hotel does nothing but provide a connection, i regard this as totally unreasonable and i decided to wait until i return to my friendly internet connection in rochester.
it is my sincere hope that the email transmission problem which has occurred here in france will miraculously cure itself upon my arrival home. but, if not, there is always the help of hoss.
still it would have been especially nice to have skype available to make long distance calls. a call to lucia to tell her that all was well would be a good thing. that has to wait. i realize how spoiled i was to have a free and solid internet connection available to me in portugal. the world was literally at my fingertips. i could talk to anybody provided that i paid some attention to the time of day. in the future, travelers need never be lonely.
i am always astounded when i think how much the world has changed since my parents left europe behind to cross over to distant america in the 1920s. the only communication back home was slow letters written on thin paper to cut down on the cost of postage.
in the youth of my parents, the railroad was still a new thing to come to come to their village. and farming was done entirely with human and animal power. even though two world wars had intervened since their childhood, my parents’ home towns had not changed that much when i saw them in the 1950s. that time seems closer to the middle ages than it does to the present. we are fortunate to live now. thngs are easier now and we did not have to pass through the trials of the great depression. our society is gentler now, at least to us, if not to others.
there has been an election and some people think it has turned out well. we shall see. there is another theory that things needed to get worse in order to turn around the electorate completely. the american people have shown themselves to be slow to respond, rather like a whale. nobody can claim that the little troubles we are having in iraq are the equivalent of a harpoon in the back of the american electorate. perhaps the probable future poverty coming from the fact that we don’t sell or make much anymore will be such a harpoon. or perhaps one can hope that the situation will respond to small adjustments.
it is hard to believe that this will happen in such a gullible and superstitious society.
joe n
